Below are the contents of our inaugural Live-Tweet Movie Scoping experience. Our first film: “Knock Off” (1998) starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and the immortal Rob Schneider. It’s JCVD’s second — and, to date, last — Tsui Hark collaboration, after “Double Team” (1997) with Dennis Rodman (yes, this Dennis Rodman, and no, sadly he’s not in “Knock Off”). And it turns out… it’s pretty damn good, very engaging visually, albeit very dumb and full of goofy plotting choices, which we will tackle below. It’s also COMPLETELY INSANE.

So this is kind of like a George Lucas Special Edition-ified version of my initial Live Tweet. I went in and connected the double-tweets where I had one idea spread out over two tweets, made a spelling/punctuation/grammatical correction or two, and deleted some tweets that I deemed superfluous (considering how many tweets remain after that last step I took, I think you’ll appreciate the gesture). Don’t worry, it’s not like I went in and unnecessarily added giant dewback lizards or anything. That would be stupid.

-On the shore, there are two contingents: good Chinese beat cops and evil Russian crooks.

-The cops watch as the Russians try to crack some baller underground safe.

-Full of…

-APPLE BABY DOLLS. That are terrifying all the divers. So clearly they’re laced with.. explosives?

-Yep. It was explosives.

-Ah, here we go. Sick fast-shutter coverage of HK action star Michael Wong in a suit jumping just out of the way of a rash of GREEN FLAMES.

-There’s some wild underwater scuba-diving coverage here.

-Also some epic wide-angle shit. And a lot of low angles. And a dece amount of rapid-fire handheld shots.

-And… MORE EXPLOSIONS NEXT TO BOATS.

-Some exposition via TV newscast – Hong Kong, 1997. The newscast, playing off a TV in a Hong Kong flea market, is helpfully in English.

-Exposition cont’d: A big ceremony commemorating the return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule from the British, w/ Prince Charles in attendance is coming up. There will be a LOT of security, which in a movie like this means that it will be horribly inept and many ppl will die.

-And now we arrive at a tacky set in Burbank… er, hip underground fashion show in HK. Here comes the SCHNEIDERATOR in full Schneider glory.

-Ad on TV (in movie): stop-motion elephant morphs into a logo drawing for this V-Six Jeans co. Hopefully JCVD/Schneider somehow have to battle that elephant later, “King Kong”-style. I’m very excited for this.

-More exposition – Schneider is in “the garment business,” and his partner is MIA, but all the models like this absentee partner more.

-JCVD’s Marcus Ray is parsing through boxes of black-market knockoff merch in a factory. Critical of a Puma knockoff’s misspelling.

-Another nice low-angle shot of him dropping the Puma box at the camera.

-JCVD spots the baby dolls from earlier in the flick that got blown the fuck up! But they’re “not part of [his] shipment,” according to a fat Chinese gangster named “Skinny.”

-Rob Schneider is getting really abusive towards this guy playing an elephant. “WE’RE NOT PAYING YOU PEANUTS.” So clever.

-WOW – crazy low-angle Snorricam FOOT POV shot of JCVD’s foot going into the knockoff “Pumma” sneakers… transitioning into a coked-out tracking shot of a ball being hit by a pool cue. I feel like this whole movie is on wide-angle lenses. Kind of looks like a ’90s TV commercial.

-Why does JCVD have this weird Julius Caesar haircut?

-Also, JCVD is 5’10” but they’re making it look like the 5’7″ Rob Schneider is a foot shorter than everyone else, including JCVD.

-Is this an “LOTR”-esque forced perspective type deal?

-Crazy circling crane shot.

-So… Schneider and JCVD are in a cart-pulling race that “Skinny” is double-betting on. We somehow get a lot of excessive sneaker close-ups.

-More epic jib/crane shots. More epic low-angle shots.

-Wide-angle AND low-angle.

-So the Chinese gangster Skinny’s cousin, JCVD’s cheap (friendly) competition, got picked up in a car at a corner somewhere and dropped off ahead of Schneider and JCVD. So… HE CHEATED. But our good-hearted heroes suspect nothing.

-The glue holding the cheap Puma rip-offs together RIPS OFF in an epic series of macro shots, derailing JCVD’s noble cart-pulling.

-So JCVD’s friend who’s been cheating in the race — Skinny’s cousin Eddie — has been planting look-a-likes along the course. Man, Eddie must have a lot riding on this cart-pulling race, huh?

-Some dudes in a van picked grabbed what they thought was the mobster’s cousin (but in fact was a doppelganger helping said cousin cheat) and killed him, even though they knew he wasn’t the guy they wanted to kill.

-So now JCVD, thinking the dudes in the van (Eastern Euro’s again) who grabbed then killed fake-Eddie actually grabbed then killed real-Eddie drags Schneider towards the van. Schneider is still sitting in the cart as JCVD pulls it, for some reason.

-Now Schneider is thrown from his bike and out of the way of the scene. The van, with JCVD in tow, SMASHES through a grocery store window.

-A fly honey looking at canned soup sprints away as the van FLIPS OVER THROUGH THE STORE.

-The fly honey SHOOTS AND KILLS the assassin who had been popping off those wide-angle blasts at JCVD’s skull just moments ago.

-Convenient, how she just happened to be in the (convenience) store when all this went down.

-And now she and JCVD are fighting in the store – first with guns, then with tomato cans. Awesome.

-This has all happened within the first 18 minutes of the movie, by the way.

-Man, all evil Europeans in the ’90s had their hair dyed blonde.

-The grocery store fly honey called one of the baddies a “perp”…

-We just got the reveal: SHE’s a cop.

-Schneider concusses her with a thrown tomato can, before JCVD can say she’s a cop.

-Next scene: She questions them DOWNTOWN. The PAINTING IN THE COP’S OFFICE IS TAPPED.

-And is being listened to/bugged by THAT CHINESE GUY WHO SURVIVED THE GREEN FIRE IN THE FIRST SCENE. He’s the fly honie’s boss.

-They’re really into Hawaiian shirts in this movie. Were they cool to wear in 1998?

-So JCVD and Schneider meet with a super-hot V-Six Jeans exec., Karen Lee (Lela Rochon), who confronts them about their jeans being knock offs.

-Hot wide-angle calf shot of Lela Rochon.

-So the fly honey is showing off her legs some more in a reverse of that last shot we were talking about.

-There are some weird eyelines going on in this scene. They have Rochon stand emphatically above her chair, and JCVD/Schneider crouch

-Now Schneider/JCVD have to ID the knock-off baby dolls.

-SLOW MO FISH BEING DUMPED INTO A TANK ESTABLISHING SHOT. Amazing.

-A Russian bathhouse conference of the two baddies. So the Russkies want the baby doll knock-offs, and “Skinny” wants $$ for the info. [Ed. Note: This tweet netted me a like and a follow from a Twitter account called “Russian baths” so.. there’s that.]

-Schneider wants to do everything in front of ppl’s parents. First he wanted to make a model burn a shirt in front of her parents. Now he wants to kill JCVD in front of HIS parents, because he spilled some coffee or tea or something onto Schneider’s shirt.

-Unnecessary eagle-eye shot of Schneider entering/taking care of business in the latrine here.

-Baddies are pissed that our heroes’ time in the square getting into mischief with the mob was covered on the front page of a local paper.

-JCVD is on an ancient laptop — covered in an epic dolly shot, at a canted angle of course. So 1998-core.

-…To be clear, we have NO IDEA who these baddies are — they’re American, and they’re talking about a “chief” being upset with Schneider.

-JCVD goes to the bathroom to find Schneider — but he’s been abducted by the randos. Opens an window and we get an EPIC SWOOPING CRANE SHOT

-Some dude in a suit (one of the American baddies) tells JCVD to “STAY OUT OF IT.” “Stay out of what?” is the natural response, because we have no idea what “it” is. Schneider is on the roof with the other guy in the suit. JCVD beats up the dude on the scaffolding beneath the roof.

-Schneider is A COP. He’s reporting to his superior that JCVD isn’t the problem, it’s Eddie Wang.

-Eddie Wang is JCVD’s buddy that was cheating in the pull-cart race.

-JCVD PUSHES SCHNEIDER AND HIS BOSS WITH A STICK until they’re on the cusp of being knocked off (ahem) the roof.

-Why do ppl have meetings on roofs in these movies? If this meeting had been on the first floor, there’d never be any risk of death by plummeting.

-“Who are you working for? TELL ME.” The answer… Paulie from “Goodfellas.”

-They’re CIA. They were using JCVD to get to Eddie Wang. Schneider lied to JCVD about making him legit in the.. garment industry.

-Schneider’s been undercover for FOUR YEARS. Oh man, Schneider finally busted out the “need-to-know-basis and YOU DIDN’T NEED TO KNOW” thing.

-So, wait, Karen Lee is NOT a cop, merely an exec at the jeans company for which JCVD was trying to go legit?

-I guess she was threatening to report them to proper authorities, not book them herself, when she forced JCVD/Schneider to ID counterfeits?

-Oh sick, a classic JCVD “I have a lot of thinking to do in a tank top in Hong Kong at dusk with ambient synths in the background” montage.

-So the V-Six jeans exec., Jane Lee, is working with the cops. And has a lot of cop-like intel on JCVD. And threatens JCVD’s arrest.

-Man that was not made clear.

-She’s working with local cops, led by Michael Wong, who’s the cop that was pursuing the Russians and barely evaded that green-flamed explosion in the first scene. So Schneider is CIA-undercover-as-legit-fashion-designer-dabbling-in-knockoffs…

-Jane Lee character is V-Six exec-working-with-local-police-to-find-knockoffs..

-“Here, BTW, is the IMDB description of “Knockoff:” “Action star Jean Claude Van Damme plays a fashion designer who must join forces with a C.I.A. agent to combat terrorism.” How can you hate a movie like this? The JCVD character must be the world’s greatest kickboxing fashion designer.

-Instead of Mom’s Pizza getting in, a big blue truck full of bad guys BURST OUT OF THE DOOR, explodig their lair with green flames.

-(Presumably from the exploding apple baby dolls). So I guess the evil Russkies knew they had been made and decided to destroy the evidence vis-a-vis blowing up the factory that Mom’s Pizza wanted to feed. My money’s on Karen Lee being the informant.

-Our selfless local cop, Michael Wong, has managed to grab onto the truck as it needlessly destroys half the city.

-Epic crane overhead shot of Michael Wong scaling the back of the truck. Accidentally swings open back doors – unleashing armed Russians.

-The Steven E. deSouza script is fine, fairly rote so far and a bit too complicated – but Tsui Hark is killing it right now.

-A shooter spotted him. Every shot has to have a little movement, even if it’s handheld.

-Sick canted-angle fight scene.

-JCVD throws a baddie off the truck. Baddie is dressed exactly like JCVD. Oh NOW Wong decides to swing back around from the door.

-JCVD GRABS A DUDE WITH HIS ANKLES AND THROW HIM OFF THE TRUCK AND INTO A BUILDING.

-Of course the dude is thrown into some scaffolding that’s under construction and impaled on a sharp unfinished thing.

-Michael Wong has a sick bomb-honing device. JCVD approves, is told not to “play with it.”

-If Schneider’s the CIA operative, shouldn’t we be seeing HIM do some sweet kickboxing on top of trucks?

-JCVD finds A TRACKING DEVICE IN HIS KNOCKOFF SHOES. Why is he continuing to wear knockoff shoes, after what happened with those “Pummas?”

-GRATUITOUS COMPOSITE SHOT ALERT as Schneider/JCVD approach what turns out to be the CIA’s make-shift Hong Kong base, beneath a temple. Clearly this was a re-shoot for exposition.

-Every second Rob Schneider is on screen, I just think about how he’s… A STAPLER.

-DERP DE DERP. DA TEETLY TUM.

-…Rated PG-13.

-ANOTHER CRANE SHOT as Schneider/JCVD meet up with Paul Sorvino and co. JCVD agrees to work with them officially (he ran off before) in exchange for Eddie’s protection while in Hong Kong and extradition after they bust whomever else they need to bust. CIA takes the deal on the spot.

-Because of course they do.

-Turns out what I thought was a tracking device attached to JCVD’s shoe is the same nano-bomb that’s attached to the apple baby dolls.

-Nano-bomb = -THE SOVIETS’ GREEN FLAME PROJECT 1989. Can be implanted into everything. Once the babies get shipped, a lot of innocent ppl will be in trouble

-JCVD gets a message via pineapple from Eddie Wang. So they’re supposed to go to the fruit market.
-Not sure if I said this already, but Eddie Wang (Wyman Wong) is “like a brother” to JCVD. I think Eddie’s nickname for him is salty shrimp?

-JCVD abducts Skinny in a car, rams it through a glass wall to escape Skinny’s reinforcements. And of course, it flips over.

-I was kind of hoping for an explosion, but oh well. Hark’s busting out canted HELICOPTER shots now?

-Karen Lee confronts Rob Schneider, immediately starts erotically cleaning his wounds and sitting with her boobs way too close to him.

-She opened up her top a bit to treat him, for some reason?

-He busts out the surveillance tape in front of an abducted Skinny, at the CIA hide-out. To prove that Skinny booby-trapped Eddie’s safe.

-But the tape proves that the double-crossing informant for the Russians is…

-…KAREN LEE. #calledit.

-JCVD leaves CIA temple-hideout to alert Schneider about this (who’s still erotically having his wounds cleaned by KL)…

-AND THE TEMPLE EXPLODES IN A FLURRY OF GREEN FLAMES AS SOON AS HE’S CLEAR OF IT. Goodbye Sorvino/Skinny/surveillance tape/non-Schneider CIA.

-Awesome. Was not expecting this. Good 2nd-act twist, deSouza. Continue.

-I think the temple was a model the whole time, ’cause that explosion was totes a comp. shoot too.

-Back in the V-Six offices, Karen Lee is erotically massaging/stretching/icing Schneider, her boobs in his face as she handcuffs him.

-She SLAPS HIM IN THE FACE, which he enjoys. Then POINTS A LITTLE SNUB NOSE PISTOL AT HIS FOREHEAD. A gratuitous booty-favoring angle is used as she presses one heel against his chest and starts questioning him. I think even with the gun this sort of still feels like foreplay.

-Who says that as a threat? “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road?” I think it’s just a set-up for a solid Schneider retort:

-“You’ve gotta get some new CD’s, Harry.” Well played, Schneider. Well played. It does warrant that response-slap from Sorvino though.

-There’s a lot of slapping in this movie. I understand it for ladies, but dudes are cleared to actually be punched, you know.

-JCVD and Michael Wong somehow know which transpo. ship is our villains’ transpo. ship. How they know this is unclear.

-JCVD takes the ship’s crane arm and smashes the roof of crate room with the Russians/Sorvino/Schneider/Karen Lee.

-Is it weird that I’m referring to the non-famous actors as their characters and the famous ones as themselves? Fuck it, we’ve come too far.

-Oh right – Karen Lee (non-famous actress name: Lela Rachon) had what looked like a soap dispenser containing the flesh-eating acid stuffed in her mouth. Like the dispenser part.

-Why she didn’t just spit this out, when it would have either burned through the arms, shirt, or shoes of Sorvino when he was next to her (depending on its trajectory) is a mystery to me. It’s not like they glued her mouth shut or anything.

-Anyway, so their crate area got rocked by JCVD’s crane arm, Karen Lee and Schneider were knocked over. Now Lee has the soap dispenser/acid..

-She grabs it between her legs (they’re both bound to chairs still) and HURLS IT IN SLOW MOTION ONTO SORVINO’S ARM. SICK.

-The tarp covering this crate area is shredded and JCVD + some water are crashing the party. JCVD shoots at the baddies behind a crate — sourcing the movie’s poster.

-Not sure why they didn’t put Schneider on the cover too, he was a big deal by ’98, wasn’t he?

-Turns out “Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigalo” came out 12/10/99, and this came out 9/4/98. But he was a known commodity via SNL.

-Everybody in this movie not named Paul Sorvino or Rob Schneider looks like they’re in Chumbawumba.

-Remember Chumbawumba?

-So that fly honey from the grocery store, the local cop (character name: Detective Ling Ho, actress name: Carman Lee), is part of security for the Hong Kong independence ceremony. She’s in a ship patrolling the water, and they have a fleet of choppers at their control.

-The captain orders the cargo ship to stop, because they’re approaching a restricted border. Michael Wong is at the helm of the baddies’ ship

-Wait wait wait — Chumbawamba HAS TAKEN SMALL STABBING WEAPONS OUT FROM BEHIND HIS LENSES. So he just… stashes them in his glasses?

-Like, when he’s walking around? Just going to the grocery store or whatever?

-Does he only outfit the glasses to have stabbing weapons when he’s at work? I’m curious about this.

-From the deck, JCVD somehow flips Glasses Chumbawamba backwards with some rope, up into the air (he flips around, feet over head, twice), and onto a crate. So THIS is why they filmed this dude for so long.

-OK, so Glasses Chumbawamba’s actual name is Michael Miller. We’ll call him Miller from now on.

-“Now on” I guess just meant the last 30 seconds, because Miller just got crate-murdered as well. RIP Glasses Chumbawamba:

-Karen Lee spreads her legs and rides a railing, more unnecessary-but-appreciated pseduo-eroticism in lieu of actual eroticism because this movie ain’t got time for that.

-Baddie gets Karen Lee hanging from the boat – she is rescued by MICHAEL WONG JUMPING IN THE AIR IN SLOW MOTION, BLASTING HIM VIA MACHINE GUN.

-Wong’s sideways jumping has slow-motion-landed him in the ocean.

-JCVD had to take off his shirt again — to appease the ladies, I think. There must be a shirtless-JCVD-screen time quota.

-Sorvino/Johansson stands on another rig (I don’t recall seeing him get there, but no matter), cackling as he prepares to detonate some explosive pants. Oh and some explosive devices in Karen Lee’s cleavage again.

-JCVD/Schneider/Wong jump into a life boat. Karen ditches the boob-bombs and jumps into the water just in time as the cargo vessel ERUPTS.

-Our heroes slow-motion/wide-angle swim away. Karen Lee, who had been wading, DIVES underwater just in time to avoid a bad concussion and/or severe brain trauma at the hands of a crate.

-So Sorvino has escaped. He’s playing with a little mechanized Godzilla toy, which for some reason DETONATES IN GREEN FLAME.

-Who rigged it? Why? Isn’t HE the guy with the bombs?

-Were all the bombs supposedly on the ship? Clearly they WEREN’T all there, otherwise he wouldn’t have had to deal with exploding-Gojira.

-And it’s over.

-So.. what’s going to happen with the JCVD character’s career? Are all the bombs accounted for? Was every remaining baddie associated with Green Flame on that boat? Aside from Paul Sorvino, who died immediately after?

-And who killed Sorvino? Schneider/JCVD didn’t seem to have any idea where he went, right? All of Skinny’s guys are gone, right?

-So some post-mortem notes..

-JCVD was so blasted on coke making this movie, by his own admission, that he has very little recollection of its production. My question: what about Schneider?